7 New York City execs share the very first thing they do when they get into the office

Alexi Nazem

Business Insider asked seven New York City-based execs about the first thing they do when they get into the office.
Some hold meetings while others work solo on a project.
Many check in with their teams — even if those teams are across the world.

The first hour or so of the workday can be rough.

There's always the temptation to dive straight into your inbox — and potentially stay there for the rest of the day.

Or, you might sit twiddling your thumbs because you didn't plan accordingly and have no idea which task to tackle first.

These problems are only exacerbated if you're a top executive juggling multiple priorities, and everyone's demanding a piece of your time.

To find out how said executives approach this issue, we asked seven New York City-based CEOs and company founders how they like to kick off their workday. Read on to see how the super busy and powerful manage their time.

Ryan Williams, the cofounder and CEO of Cadre, gets email out of the way.

Cadre is an online real-estate marketplace that connects approved sellers and high net-worth individuals.

Once I'm in the office, I like to use that time to respond to email.

I read a book recently called "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. The thesis is that it's really important to give yourself space to think. Your greatest insights often come when there's the fewest distractions.

To that end, I like to focus on email at six points in the day [the first is in the early morning] so I can spend most of my day focused on the big picture, which manifests itself in meetings with my management team.

Scott Britton, the cofounder of Troops, concentrates on a project.

Troops creates Slackbots for sales teams.

I'll quickly look over my email. If there's nothing urgent, I try to do something that is not reactive, that's more of a project-based piece of work that takes dedicated time. Generally, it's trying to get the most important thing done, which is not typically email.

For me, it's very easy once I get in email-reaction mode to be doing that all day and not doing any high-level work. So I try to avoid that as long as possible and try to knock out whatever the most important thing is.